Part of Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill – in the House of Lords at 6:45 pm on 15 December 2010.
I have been around Whitehall and Westminster only for about 40 years, but during the whole of that time people from the Opposition Benches have stood up and made that speech about various bits of legislation. In fact, as noble Lords opposite will know, the time offered in the other place for scrutiny of the Bill was positively extravagant, matched only by the verbosity and time-wasting of the spokesmen for the Opposition, who used every opportunity to waste time exactly so that somebody at this end could make the complaint that the noble Lord has just made-and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, knows that more than most.